Mr T, I'm shocked, shocked to find swearing going on in
here!
I agree completely with the examples you cited. The point of
my earlier posting is that there have been many crime novels
published that don't fit the conventional formulas (which is
why I listed examples from Time Magazine's list of greatest
novels)--Hammett, Thompson, Cain, Chandler, Goodis,
Willeford, Macdonald, Marlowe, James Sallis, Ken Bruen, Vicki
Hendricks, etc. all wrote or are writing books that transcend
genre even though their books are classified as crime
fiction. BUT--go into any bookstore today and you'll find
plenty of examples of formulaic, conventional mysteries and
thrillers that are pure genre. I'll go further--more and more
today the larger NY houses are unwilling to publish "crime
novels" that aren't formulaic and conventional, while these
same restraints aren't put on "literary" fiction. There's a
reason why the readers on this group tend to gravitate
towards presses like Hard Case Crime, Serpent's Tail, No Exit
Press, Bitter Lemmon, Bleak House, etc.-- because these are
the houses that are more willing to publish these crime
novels that color outside the lines (and thank god for these
houses--both as a reader and as a writer!!!).
--Dave Z.
> The idea that there is a "formula" for crime fiction
comes from a
> false identification of crime fiction with classic
PI fiction. The
> bottle in the drawer, the shabby office, the
outsider who wants to
> find the truth no matter what, etc. But if you look
at crime
fiction,
> it can encompass practically any situation, any
environment (rural,
> city, the mythological West, any country, any point
of view, as
wide a
> range of characters as any other type of
fiction).
>
> If you make a list of a dozen of the greatest crime
novels and try
to
> find a common formula, you won't find it. What does
Red Harvest have
> to do with The Day of the Locust, formulawise?
Nothing. What does
> Leonard's Freaky Deaky have to do with a Parker
novel by Richard
Stark
> or with a Jim Sallis novel? Nothing.
>
> I regard this distinction between genre fiction and
literary fiction
> as 99% bullshit, no, 100% bullshit.
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
>
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